XOLA Tyali's letter regarding electing woman office bearers into ANC branches puts forward a very good idea ("Let's elect women office bearers", October 9). The problem is we have had female ministers of health and defence, premiers and a SAPS commissioner – and that has been a disaster from the start due to incompetence of personnel at grassroots level.
How can you appoint Riah Phiyega as head of SAPS because she was the chairwoman of the presidential review committee on state-owned enterprises and then make her a police general?
Nowhere in the business world would company directors appoint staff to run company branches because they were female, or male for that matter, unless they had the qualifications, even more so the experience and not just populists with their own agendas.
In the mid '90s white municipal technicians, engineers and accountants were given packages, and asked to leave so that the posts could be filled by ANC cadres with zero experience, which is one of the reasons why we have a serious service delivery problem today.
The only committed female presidents I have seen are Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, of Liberia, and Joyce Banda, of Malawi. These women have taken control of their governments by the scruff of the neck and made huge changes for all their women in their respective countries.
Sadly in South Africa this will never happen until this country has been brought to its knees through political unrest due to unemployment, poverty and desperation to survive.
Just maybe then the ANC will look at a competent female deputy president. I pray this happens, we need less testosterone in the world today.
Michael Hardman, Cape Town
Letters
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